“Is there anything else I can get you Madame Clarisse, Magnum Damarion?” I curtsey as she stares critically at the cupcakes.

She frowns down at the cupcakes and asks in an eerily silent voice, “Are they the sugar-free, I asked for –”

Panic and terror settle in my gut, I had not remembered that, I had been distracted all day wondering if I should escape or not.

“– well they don’t seem like it. Are they?” She demands after a bite.

I can feel myself ripping in half, if I do not say anything who will get hurt? If I say yes who will get hurt? I lock my jaw and refuse to even breathe.

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“Well are they?” She asks in a voice that promises blood.

My blood begins to heat as I go numb with panic. I wince. Confirmation enough.

This is not about the cupcakes. This is a show of power from the hyena to impress the lion, and I am the rabbit about to get its throat ripped out.

She hands a cupcake to the Magnum, giving the lion a taste of the prize that could come of this. A fleeting look of conflict crosses his face but just as soon as it is gone he takes a bite and the haze of bloodlust crosses his face.

“No, they don’t taste sugar-free now do they.” He chuckles at me, and frost shoots through my veins. The noble lion has joined the ignoble hyena to tear apart the rabbit.

He asks, his honey-like voice becoming the steel of a Magnum blade, “Are they the sugar-free she ordered?”

He asks, the shadows on his face becoming darker and sharper. The laughing purple in his eyes turns to a dark hardened grey. I stare at the candles on the table knowing that the two of them will not be nice enough to go straight for the throat. They will take their time, they will start with small bites and continue until I bleed dry.

I know that if I were to open my mouth to confess now it would only make it worse.

“Do you want to try one? Maybe you could really tell us if the baker of these followed my instructions.” Magnus Madame Clarisse says with venom boiling through her words.

I struggle for breath. She knows it was me, and now she is going to humiliate me. I suppose the hyena and rabbit scenario is not uncommon, seeing the number of servi suicides there are.

She picks up a cupcake and saunters toward me, but instead of handing me the cupcake she daintily unwraps it. “Open up,” she says in a cloyingly syrupy voice. “Come on, it’s not like it’s a command.”

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I clench my jaw trying to keep my pride, but I know that I will be put to death if I do not obey. I rigidly unhinge my jaw.

The words drip from her mouth like the blood of some other poor rabbit she already killed. The lion remains stoic in the corner, his eyes glazed over, unfeeling. The arrogant-rich-boy is back.

“Well loosen up!” She shrieks.

Magnus Madame Clarisse shoves the cupcake into my already bruised cheek with the force of a punch. I watch as purple and white frosting mars my vision and sticks to my eyelashes. I am struck by how much the frosting looks like thick fat snowflakes.